SOCIAL

Mexican senator seeks to allow same-sex marriage nationally

A lawmaker from Mexico’s Party of the Democratic Revolution plans to take a proposal legalizing same-sex marriage nationally to the Senate today but the National Action Party says it will vote against the reform

A senator from Mexico’s Party of the Democratic Revolution (PDR) will put forward a proposal to legalize same-sex marriage across the nation today.

Mexico’s Supreme Court has ruled that same-sex marriage is constitutional and several states now allow same-sex couples to marry but the majority of states have not passed reforms on the issue and so the PDR plans to implement a nation wide reform.

PDR Senator Fernando Mayans presented the initiative to his parliamentary group last Thursday and is expected to present the proposal to the Senate today.

The initiative, published in the Senate gazette, states, ‘This reform is consistent and meets a legislative trend internationally, under which various countries have recognized the nature of marriage, by legislation or case law, to be inclusive of unions between persons of the same sex.’

However the opposition National Action Party has signaled it will vote against the reform.

PAN leader in the Senate Jorge Luis Preciado told CNN Mexico, ‘we would vote against, as we have done repeatedly.’

Media reports have not indicated how lawmakers from the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party of President Enrique Peña Nieto will vote on the measure.

However Peña Nieto said during the 2012 Mexican Election campaign that he believed the issue should be left to individual states to decide.